This is huge and well worth reading… titled “The Destruction of Economic Fact”, this article is about how financial rules have been changed to circumnavigate the truth in order to gain short term profit. The end result is not just uncertainty, but an erosion of stability that previously attracted so much worldwide investment into the US economy.

Money quote:

…businesses are left to figure out reality on the basis of connections, influence, and private information. Just like we do in developing and former communist countries.

Good article about biggest financial mistakes of the past decade… readers send in their votes to determine the biggest money bad guy. Bernie Madoff was the winner, but write-in candidates Barney Frank as well as other politicians scored surprisingly well at doing bad.

In my opinion this was the best quote:

According to reader Frogigger, the Obama administration has wasted “more money than one man and a D-10 Cat could bury in a hole in 10 years time.”

Something else seems to have escaped these two U. S. senators – namely, that they are U.S. senators. Which means their getting a loan at a preferential rate through the head of a corporation like Countrywide, which was very much dependent on favorable treatment by the government before it came crashing down at great expense to the taxpayers, is quite different from a private citizen’s getting a mortgage at the same preferential rate.

Why? Because the private citizen is in no position to return the favor through political influence. Which is why the ethical standards expected of public officials are higher. Or at least should be. That crucial distinction used to be well understood. I’m not so sure it is now.

This is essentially about the senate ethics committee pretending it doesn’t see corruption. Sen. Dodd and Sen. Conrad got off because their cohorts decided the rules they bent were bent by others also… never mind they received gifts from those they were supposed to be regulating. Bastard politicians.

And let’s be clear – it’s not like a parking violation or speeding during rush hour. People are losing their homes due to a mortgage industry that was wildly out of control… but Dodd and Conrad get off because, well – because everyone else was doing it too.

The ethics committee’s decision was an indictment of the rules, not an exoneration of Dodd and Conrad.

Again, my only surprise is that elected officials are surprised when angry constituents show up at town hall meetings frothing at the mouth.